'Old smokers' discovered at the heart of the Milky Way

We say the words and we imagine a small group of oldies blissfully passing time smoking cigarettes. But 'old smokers' have been detected in space now. Yep, and in our very own Milky Way. There is a certain mystery about these stars as after a prolonged period of inactivity, they are suddenly puffing out clouds of smoke, some of which are the size of our Solar System!

These 'old smokers' were found when scientists were monitoring nearly a billion stars in infrared spectrum over a sky-survey that lasted for 10 years.

“They’re sitting there and just suddenly throwing off matter,” said Prof Philip Lucas of the University of Hertfordshire, who led the observations.

“It’s a new type of star and they all seem to be clustered in the same part of the sky, very close to the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.”

Professor Lucas was quoted by The Independent.

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Fun fact. The scientists did not set out to check on these 'old smokers'. The main aim of the survey to observe protostars, the newborn stars.

As the experts trained their lenses at the expanse looking at nearly a billion stars, a group of giant stars showed up in the data.

However, when these stars was studied in detail with the use of European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, it was found that these a new type of giant stars. The researchers decided to call them "old smokers".

“These are solar system-sized clouds,” said Lucas. “Our guess is that these are puffs of dust in one direction, possibly from one patch on the surface of the star.”

(With inputs from agencies)